Syal tightened the muscles of her face, struggling to hold back new tears that wanted to stream forth, and started to rise.
“Sit,” the woman said. She turned to Leader. “You. Be a good boy and go away.”
Leader gaped at her. “You—”
The woman smiled at him, showing teeth. “The correct response is Yes, ma'am. Now go.”
Leader evaluated her expression, then hurriedly rose. “Yes, ma'am.”
The woman waited until he was out of the interrogation room. She returned her attention to Syal. “Yes, we'll verify the details of your story. If they check out, you'll be returned to active service. But I doubt you'll be returned to VibroSword Squadron. I suspect that it can be considered a hostile environment for you now.”
“I think you're right.”
“Your leg is going again.” The woman turned her attention to the datapad in front of her. “It says here that you were offered the chance to join a new squadron handling the first deployment of the Aleph-class fighters. Is that correct?”
Syal nodded. “I didn't want to, though. I've played around with Aleph simulators. They've got plenty of speed, but they maneuver like big plugs of duracrete.”
“And if your only options are to fly Alephs or work as a communications officer aboard a sensor ship?”
“Alephs sound great, ma'am.”
“Spoken like a true Antilles.” The woman closed her datapad.
“You're from Intelligence, aren't you? I would have thought that my own squadron leader would have been the sympathetic one and you would have been a plasteel nek about the whole thing.”
The woman nodded. “Never can tell how the past is going to affect things, can you?” She rose. “I don't know what your squadron leader's problem is. Jealousy, or maybe he needs to be in complete control, and the fact that you didn't divulge about your famous father constitutes a betrayal. As for me . . .” She offered Syal a slight smile. “Once upon a time, not long after the New Republic won Coruscant that first time, I flew with your father for a few months. I've known some of his pilots considerably longer. I know what sort of children he'll have raised. If you're really Syal Antilles, I suspect you're in the clear.”
On her way out the door, she added, “And you might as well legally change your name back. Your secret's out.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
LORRD CITY, LORRD
SHE WAS WILLOWY-TALL, WITH LONG BLACK HAIR IN A FLOWING ponytail. Ben saw her first from the cockpit of Jacen's shuttle as the vehicle drifted down on repulsorlifts. The woman was neither distinct nor interesting at that time, merely a shadowy figure leaning, arms crossed, against the hangar pit wall.
But once they were grounded, cleared to emerge, and descending the shuttle's boarding ramp, she strode forward out of the shadows, and Ben suddenly found her very interesting indeed. Her robes—a green and tan-yellow combination not commonly seen on Jedi—were tailored to her, flattering her figure, and her widemouthed smile was a celebration that invited all who saw it to join in.
Sadly, Ben's sudden interest was one-sided. She walked quickly to the ramp's base, her attention fixed on Jacen, her hand extended toward the adult Jedi. “Jacen!” she said. “It's good to see you.”
Jacen reached the bottom of the ramp and took her hand, but did not draw her into an embrace, not even the cordial embrace of old friends—though her body language, even to Ben's inexperienced eye, suggested that this was what she expected. “Nelani,” Jacen said. “When I heard that you were the Jedi assigned to the Lorrd station, that you'd be the one meeting us, I was glad—”
“Really?”
“Glad to realize that you'd passed your trials and were fully vested as a Jedi Knight,” he continued. “Congratulations.”
Her smile faltered slightly. “Thank you.” She released her grip on his hand, and her attention finally turned to Ben. “And this must be Ben Skywalker.”
Ben stood silent. It wasn't that he didn't want to say anything. It was just that his entire vocabulary, including some choice swear words in Rodian and Huttese he'd gone to great pains to memorize, had just vanished. He wondered where it was.
Nelani cast a worried glance at Jacen. “Does he talk?”
Ben's vocabulary suddenly returned. “You're being condescending,” he said.
Absently she ruffled his hair. “Certainly not. You just had me puzzled for a moment.” She returned her attention to Jacen. “So what did you want to do first? Get settled in your quarters at the station?” She gestured toward the exit from the hangar pit, then led them in that direction.
“Have you researched the matter I commed you about?” Jacen asked.
Ben fell into line behind them, furiously smoothing his hair.
“Yes, and I've found a contact who seems to know something about your tassels, a Doctor Heilan Rotham. Tactile writing and recording methods are her specialty . . .”
Dr. Rotham's offices—also her quarters—were on the ground floor of a university building built of duracrete bricks and falsewoods, then comfortably aged for a couple of centuries. The walls of the corridors and chambers were dark—either soothing or shadowy and threatening, depending on one's attitude toward such things—and so somber that it seemed to Ben that they could swallow all humor.
Not that, in the office chambers, the walls were all that easy to see. Shelves lined the room, displaying books, scrolls, figurines of strangely misshapen males and females of many species, coils of irregularly knotted rope, and small wooden boxes with hinged lids.
He looked over to the table where Dr. Rotham sat with Jacen and Nelani. Dr. Rotham was a human woman, tiny and ancient. Her hair was white and wispy; her skin was pale, traced with blue veins, and almost transparent. She wore a heavy maroon robe, even though Ben found the temperature in these chambers to be on the warm side, and her eyes were a piercing blue unclouded by age. She sat on a self-propelled chair, a wheeled thing with a bulky undercarriage that suggested it was equipped with short-range repulsorlifts. She held Jacen's mass of tassels up before her eves, scrutinizing them from a distance of only four or five centimeters.
“You have a lot of stuff here,” Ben said.
Without looking at him, Dr. Rotham said, “I do, don't I? And what's remarkable is that every datum that can be derived from those objects has been recorded into my office memory for my datapads, into Lorrd's computer system, and into the computers of any person who has ever asked for them.”
Ben took another look around the room's extensive banks of shelving. “But if it's all recorded, why do you keep the original things? They take up a lot of room.”
“A reasonable question from a Jedi, who must travel often and lightly. But you must remember that there is a tremendous difference between a thing and the knowledge of a thing. For instance, think about your best friend. Would you prefer to have your best friend, or a datapad stuffed full of knowledge about him?”
Ben considered. He didn't want to give her the obvious, “correct” answer—it seemed like a defeat. Instead, he said, “That's a good question.” It was an answer he had heard adults offer many times, one he suspected they used whenever they couldn't think of anything better to say.
Jacen chuckled and Dr. Rotham did not follow up on her question. Ben concluded that he had held his own.
“This one,” Dr. Rotham said, “is definitely Bith, a recording method of an isolated island race, the Aalagar, that concocted the knotting style as a means of recording genealogies—`strings of ancestors.' Later the technique was expanded to permit the recording of thoughts and statements. Roughly translated, it means, 'He will ruin those who deny justice.' “
Nelani frowned. “That's . . . curiously ominous.”
“Why?” Jacen asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Jedi do that all the time. Ruin those who deny justice.”
Nelani shook her head. “Ruination is sometimes a result of what we do. But it's not usually the goal. Ruination as a goal sounds like vengefulness. Not a t
rait suited to a Jedi.”
Ben caught Jacen's eye, silently requesting confirmation of Nelani's assertion. Jacen shrugged unhelpfully.
“I'm certain I can translate many of the others,” Dr. Rotham continued. “Though, since they all appear to be separated from their cultural contexts, how accurate those translations will be is somewhat up in the air. Perhaps they provide a context for one another. If so, that will be helpful.”
Jacen nodded. “I'd appreciate whatever you could tell us.”
As he spoke, Nelani beeped—or, rather, something on her person did. She hurriedly fit a small hands-free comlink to the back of her right ear; she pulled part of the device loose and it swung out, a little black ball, to bob and sway gently at the corner of her mouth, suspended by a black wire so fine as to be almost invisible. “Nelani Dinn,” she said.
After a few moments of listening, Nelani frowned. “Did he say why a Jedi?” She paused, cocking her head to one side. “And you think it's credible . . . Yes, I'll be right there . . . about ten minutes. Out.” She tucked the bobbing microphone back up under her ear and rose. “I apologize for ducking out, but I have to go.”
“Emergency?” Jacen asked.
“Yes. Some sort of lunatic in a starfighter threatening to launch missiles if he's not allowed to talk to a Jedi.”
“I get the impression that it will take Doctor Rotham some time to complete any more translations.” Jacen glanced at the elderly woman for confirmation, and at her nod he rose. “I'll come with you.”
“You'd be welcome,” Nelani said.
It was an odd situation at the Lorrd City Spaceport. A Y-wing star-fighter, so battle-scarred and patched that it had probably been ancient at the time of the Battle of Yavin, had set down fifty meters from the approved landing zone. Nor had it landed on a flat surface; its ion jet drive pods rested on a repulsorlift taxiing strip, at right angles to the normal direction of traffic, and its nose was up on a meters-high duracrete traffic barrier, leaving the starfighter at a thirty-degree upward angle.
“He's short an astromech,” Ben said. Indeed, there was nothing in the circular gap immediately behind the cockpit. “And it's modded for concussion missiles instead of proton torpedoes.”
“He also has a nice firing angle on the most populous area of the city,” said Lieutenant Neav Samran of the Lorrd Security Force. A heavyset human man with brown hair and mustache grown just a bit longer than regulations probably permitted, he had his forces deployed all around the Y-wing at distances of fifty to two hundred meters, and snipers were conspicuous on hangar rooftops. Samran's command post, where the three Jedi had joined him, was at the corner of the corrugated durasteel-sided hangar a hundred meters from the starfighter. Ben stood behind Jacen, but to one side, where he could keep an eye on the Y-wing and the faintly visible figure in the cockpit.
Ben found he could actually feel the pilot there, as a hard knot of pain and confusion that faded and swelled, moving in and out of the boy's perceptions.
“Do you have any indication of whether he actually has live concussion missiles and how he got them?” Jacen asked.
Samran nodded. “He sent us the telemetry from his weapons board—a one-way feed, blast it, else we'd have been able to slice into his controls and solve this without calling you in. He has a full brace of missiles aimed at the student housing districts—precisely where, we can't be sure. As for how he got them—he doesn't have a credit left in what had been a decent-sized savings and investments account. With all the weapons smuggling going on these days, it's no surprise that an old pilot with lots of connections could get his hands on ordnance like that.”
“What can you tell us about him?” Nelani asked.
Samran opened his datapad and consulted it. “Ordith Huarr, age eighty-one standard years. Human male originally from Lorrd. Back in the Old Republic and Empire days, he was a shuttle pilot. At the height of the Rebel Alliance, he joined them and spent the war as a Y-wing pilot, during which time he scored one-half of a kill. His record as a Rebel pilot was undistinguished.”
Nelani shot Samran an admonishing look. “He was no less brave than pilots with better kill records.”
Samran held her stare, unruffled. “The comment about his record was offered as a possible key to his mental state. In my experience, people with mediocre skills and unremarkable records are more likely to come unhinged. They experience more frustration, less appreciation. Or do you disagree?”
Nelani's expression relented a bit, to one of milder disapproval, and she turned away to stare at the old starfighter again.
“Anyway,” Samran continued, “he became a flight instructor after the Empire fell, and eventually retired and returned to Lorrd. He came out of retirement a few years back to shuttle Yuuzhan Vong war refugees around, and the records suggest that being kicked around from planet to planet unwilling to accept refugees did something bad to his outlook. After the Yuuzhan Vong war, he came back again, bought some rural property with his wife, and spent the next several years living off his pension and shooting blasters at intruders.”
“Any children?” Nelani asked.
“No children,” Samran said. “And his wife died about two years ago.”
“Two years,” Jacen said. “What happened recently that put him behind a missile board, threatening students?”
Samran shook his head.
“I guess I'd better talk to him,” Nelani said. She turned back to Jacen. “Unless you'd like to? You're senior.”
Jacen shook his head. “No, I have another tactic I'll explore.”
She nodded, made sure her robes were suitably straight and that the lightsaber hanging at her belt was clearly visible, then marched across the plascrete parking area toward the Y-wing.
When she was fifty meters from the starfighter, the pilot's voice, broadcast over an external speaker system, boomed at her. “That's close enough.” The voice was thin, raspy.
Nelani cupped her hands around her mouth to shout her reply. “Whatever you say. Huarr, you didn't have to endanger all those students to talk to me. My station office can be reached by planetary net or comlink.”
Ben felt the pilot's pain and confusion surge, stronger than he'd experienced it previously.
“You wouldn't have taken me seriously,” the old man said. “You only understand force. Force and the Force.” He laughed, a bitter noise, as if briefly entertained by his own play on words.
“Not true, but we don't need to argue the point,” Nelani shouted. “I'm here now. Why did you want to talk to me?”
“What is a Force ghost?” Huarr asked.
Nelani was silent for a long moment. “It's a survival, a sending from someone who has died but still exists in a certain way.”
“My wife is a Force ghost,” Huarr said. “She talks to me. But she can't, can she?”
Nelani took another step forward. Even distorted by shouting, her voice sounded dubious. “Was she a Jedi? Or did she ever do things that suggested she might see things, feel things that normal people don't?”
“No.”
Caught up as he was in the dialogue between Nelani and Huarr, Ben had lost track of Jacen. Now he became aware that his mentor was concentrating, channeling the Force.
Jacen reached out and pulled a handful of air toward him. Simultaneously the Y-wing's ion jet pods skidded backward across the duracrete, sending up showers of sparks, just until the starfighter's nose slid off the barrier and crashed to the ground, facing directly into the duracrete.
Then he added a twisting motion, and the Y-wing rotated along its long axis, crashing onto the taxiing strip upside down.
“There,” Jacen told Samran. “Problem solved. He can't lift off with repulsors or thrusters, and he can't fire his missiles at the city.”
Samran looked at him in surprise, then choked up in laughter. Unable to speak, he waved the men and women of his security force toward the starfighter. They emerged from their protected positions and advanced. Ben could hear some of t
hem laughing, too.
“What are you doing?” That was Nelani, returning at a quick trot. “I had the situation under control!”
Jacen turned a dubious look on her. “No, you didn't. You were executing a decent negotiation. But to be 'in control' you would have had to be able to prevent him from firing at any moment. Could you?”
Nelani reached Jacen and stood there, her features flushed, her expression confrontational. “No, but he wouldn't have fired while we were talking.”
“Tell that to the families of all the students who would have died if he had somehow fired without your detecting it—or if he had his missiles set up on a timer, which you wouldn't have been able to feel. And don't tell me he wouldn't have. You had no control over his actions, and every moment you negotiated with him, you risked the lives of those students.”
“You think I wasn't aware of his emotional state? His feelings were lit up like a landing circle!”
While the two Jedi argued, Ben watched the spaceport security team approach the helpless starfighter. Then he felt a surge of despair from its pilot, despair and determination
“Get back!” Ben astonished himself with the volume of his scream, with the fact that he was screaming without meaning to, with the fact that he was running forward with no voluntary control of his legs. “Run! Run!”
The security agents froze at his first cry and looked back at him. Apparently the force of will he was projecting and his proximity to Lieutenant Samran were enough for them. They turned away from the Y-wing and began running.
There was a hum from the starfighter, and Ben saw ignition within its missile tubes. There was a sudden expulsion of flame, missiles punching out of their tubes and into the duracrete just in front of the starfighter‑
And then the Y-wing exploded, propelled into metallic confetti by a hemispherical wall of flame and concussive force.
STAR WARS: BETRAYAL Page 30